The Shared Topic over at Blog Azeroth comes from Deyndor of Swift Retribution who wonders:

So I was talking with Eda on twitter tonight and she mentioned that she’s had 4 raids in the last 2 weeks get canceled. And that got me wondering, what do people do when their raid is canceled?

I’m sure there will be the mundane like farming stuff or running heroics, but I’m sure there are a lot of people with some really interesting and fun things too. Maybe you invade an enemy capital by yourself. Maybe you go play an alt. Whatever it is, share it!

You know, as I started putting fingers to keys and my thoughts spilled out, my response took a slightly different path than what you might expect from the question. Some of you out there may relate, others will just mutter “loser” and move on.

Casual Player

For me, Deyndor’s question is better asked after twisting the object around: What do you do when you don’t have a raid? Not having a raid is my norm. I fill my time with instance runs, achievement collections, reputation whoring grinding and the like…  I basically farm emblems or achievements. I’ve alluded to it before, but I’m not a raider. Yep, you guessed it, I’m one of those dreaded casuals. Why?

First, I travel for work. WoW is an “unauthorized program” on my office PC (any machine connected to my corporate network is scanned to check for said unauthorized programs). If my corporate sniffer locates any illicit programs, my manager is emailed and HR is copied. That would not be a good thing. Given the jobs climate today, you can be assured I will be in full compliance to office policies — despite how much I’d dig playing from the hotel at night. So, when work calls, I’m offline. And yes, all you that are saying “Jeez, just get a laptop”?  Feel free to send me a paypal contribution toward that fund moneybags, because I already have the home desktop (and as much as I love it, it wasn’t cheap).  Justifying a second laptop for gaming while facing braces for the 3rd grader?  Nope, not gonna happen.  Besides, have you ever had to check two laptops through airport security? It’s not pleasant!

The second reason I’m not a raider is that when I’m home, I’m hanging out with the family. I actually like my family and want to spend time with them! Gasp! The only person in the house that expresses any interest in WoW is my son, and he’s a bit young to unleash upon the player community. Until the little ones are all tucked into bed and I’ve caught up with the Mrs, I’m offline.  Usually after 10 pm East, she’s calling it a day and I have a few hours to log in and tune out.

Choices and circumstances in RL make me an unreliable raid member.  I do not — nor should not — expect 9 or 24 other people to just hang out waiting on my sorry buns to log in and have an insta-raid. That would, of course, be awesome, but it’s not very realistic.

The Casual Raider

Still, raids are cool. They represent content that a solo player can not experience, and it’s a whole element to that game that I’d like to see.  Being invited to a planned raid? Well, that’s a Big Deal. Big enough that I will plan real life around occasional raid events.

On the weekend, this means hiring a babysitter.  Yep, if i want to WoW during daylight on the weekend, there better be someone there to entertain the kids. That’s my job on the weekend; I try to give the Mrs some down time since she takes care of them all week — by herself as she likes to point out — while I’m off in factories teaching people to use software. And asking her to stick in the house again so I can game? Will not increase my spousal faction!

What about at night? Well, again, for me to log in early requires some familial support. That’s good occasionally, and it usually requires something in return from me. It can cause strain (Mrs doesn’t get — at all — the lure of MMOs).  In fact, it’s safe to say she hates all video games. But, I too hate chick flicks and tofu, but I’ll still endure them from time to time because you have to support your partner by doing things together. Holy tangent, Batman!

Anyways, you get the sense that me participating in a raid requires a bit more than the average player?

So consider that all of the above planning has taken place… and poof!  Cancellation!

You know what? When that happens, I’m pissed. All that effort to be available is wasted. All of the real world stress is pointless. At that point, I’m done with the game. Time to grab a book, catch up on some DVRs or removing some of that marriage stress by checking to see if “going to bed” meant “going to sleep”.

See why I’m casual?

I was asked recently how I manage threat in my instance runs.  Not by an ability or rotation scheme, but rather from a informational system. Your UI and what you do within it are the major factors impacting the information you have at your fingertips. But, it’s not enough to slap a few AddOns in the mix and have information scattered all over the screen. To be effective, that information has to be organized. So, with that in mind, here’s how I organize that information.

Name Plates

Why name plates?  It’s an obvious indicator of threat. I’ve profiled Threat Plates before, and for me it’s an essential.  It is amazing to help figure out which mob in the pack is eyeballing my heals (or overzealous DPS).  Anything that I don’t have 100% threat focus will be enlarged; it makes it that much easier to click the correct target for the next icy touch. With two mobs, tab-targeting is fine.  With a larger group, it takes too long to tab through, and a big red bar is pretty easy to see and target.

Threat Plates showing Fail tank losing Aggro

Action Bars and Inline Timers

The first thing I change in my UI is the default action bars. I like Dominos for this.  However, the real meat for threat management are the OmniCC and Inline Aura AddOns.  OmniCC adds a cooldown count to the action bars for my abilities; this tells me at a glance how many seconds left until my rune cooldowns are ready to fire again. Inline Aura tells me how many seconds are left on my diseases. This second part is pretty crucial, especially considering incoming spike damage will soar if Frost Fever (and by extension Icy Talons) is allowed to fade. I’ve tried other timers like Class Timers or Power Auras, but for me it’s simplest to monitor the action bars for cooldown counts. This way, I can glance at the action bar to know when to fire and upcoming durations.

Action Bar with Inline Aura durations and OmniCC cooldown counts

The red (and yellow at times, but not shown) numbers in the center of the action bar button is OmniCC telling me how long my runes have before they refresh.  The yellow number on the very bottom is Inline Aura telling me how many seconds are left on my current target for that ability.  Another way of saying that?  OmniCC tells me when I can use my next ability.  Inline Aura tells me how much longer my disease will tick away on my current target.

There you have it, everything you ever needed to know about visual threat management.

Cheers!

The Original Death Knight

I really thought I was hot stuff. I mean the healer was barely dipping below 90% mana, and I was constantly near full health. There were absolutely zero aggro issues, and any day that I don’t get mobs peeling out of the poo I’ve laid down to chase down a ranged dps or healer I call a good day. We were in the Culling of Stratholme, and we were rocking the place.

So, I’m feeling pretty much like Big Man Tank.

Then, reality smacks me.  Hard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kudos to those that got the movie reference!

WTF am I blabbing about? Artie earned the Sword in the Skull achievement and picked up his Quel’Delar, Might of the Faithful yesterday. I’ve applied a Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle to it for the defense boost. Tooltip readers will recall that Icebound Fortitude scales with Defense. Defense cap?!? Nope! My other 2h options have been: Edge of Ruin, Tyrannical Beheader, Claymore of the Prophet, or Titansteel Destroyer.  The QD slays ‘em all.

As an aside, why go with Might of the Faithful instead of Ferocity of the Scorned? As well as my liberal arts educated brain can process, Death Knights should value Strength over Agility, because Strength contributes to both Parry and Attack Power.  More parry equals less damage taken.  More Attack Power equals more threat. Besides, the Stamina boost is greater and I think it would rock to sport as much health as a druid in Bear form.

Anyways… back to the subject at hand.  Now that I have a bit better 2H to equip, I’m changing my mind again for the “which spec to tank with” question.  After spending all that effort playing with talent calculators and devouring the threads at Elitist Jerks and Pwnwear refining my Dual Wield approach, I’m leaving it in the dust to swap back to a 2H build.

Switching back to a 2H spec does not mean I’m locked to Frost. It’s been tactfully pointed out on some reader comments that perhaps I misunderstand the mechanics of tanking in specs outside Frost.  And you know what?  You’re right. I haven’t fully played with either Blood or Unholy tanking specs to claim any level of expertise.

Why?

Up to now, my stance on Artie has been that he’s an instance tank, not a raid tank.  Talent, gear and expectations have all been based around the 5m Heroic level; the frost specs I’ve shared on this blog have all been optimized for heroic instance tanking. However, due to some personnel changes within my guild, there is a slot in some raids for a tank. I was lucky enough to tank on an Onyxia 10m last week… earning Artie’s first ever actual raid achievement and my personal first Onyxia kill on any of my WoW toons since Ony dinged 83!

That experience got me thinking… if I’m going to actually have some chances to raid as a tank, then I need to step up my spec choices to reflect a more raid friendly tank spec.  Something with more single-target threat and survivability or “effective health” (which from what I’ve gleaned is where Blood really shines).  I got lucky in the Ony run — my instance tanking spec was a great match for my role, since I was on whelp duty.  Just like in a 5m instance, the snap aggro of Howling Blast helped pack in the whelps to nice tight AoE targets for the ranged DPS. The other nice plus was my contribution to raid buffs with the Improved Icy Talons! It’s nice to know that I can fulfill a tanking role and still bring utility to the party, as well.

I’m excited to have an opportunity to raid, to see some of the fights I read about, and to experience part of the game that I rarely have seen in the past.

Cheers!

I had some time to run a few random instances this weekend, and I had been holding onto the secondary spec as a DPS spec. But, my DPS on Artie blows chunks now.  I’m so out of that game with the unholy rotation or the blood rotation that I was only pulling 2K DPS…  Rather than try to be a jack of all trades and master of none, Artie is now a full fledged tanking toon.  I’ve even taken this to the extreme and sold all of my DPS gears so that I’m not tempted to revert back anytime soon (and before anyone freaks out, my DPS set was blues and a few epics from 3.0 heroics — before ToC — and a few epics from regular mode ToC.  I’m not too stressed about replacing that stuff.)

So, as a full-fledged dedicated Death Tank, I left my bread and butter 2h frost in the main slot, paid the 50 gold to unlearn the latest Unholy DPS talents, and stacked in a dual wielding ITT frost spec — it’s nothing earth shattering, and it looks like this:

What are all the goodies?

Well, I’m still taking all of the loveliness associated with Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons — more haste for more swings and more applications of the Rune of Razorice. When we don’t have a shammy in party haste buffing, I can haste buff. When we do have said shammy, I’m still hitting faster… The animation reminds me of a rogue cracked up on Red Bull and just wailing away, and I fuggin love it.

Also, I retained what I consider the essential tanking talents: Blade Barrier in Blood, Anticipation from Unholy, and Toughness, Frigid Dreadplate, Improved Frost Presence, Unbreakable Armor and Guile of Gorefiend.

Sacrifices?  Simply not enough talent points for two staples in 2H — Black Ice and a maxxed Killing Machine. Hey something had to give, and I would rather go all the way into IIT and I’m willing to lose the 10% boost to Frost attacks from Black Ice with the change to the threat mechanic for Icy Touch in 3.3.3. With regard to the 3/5 Killing Machine, it still procs, but I have noticed that it doesn’t fire nearly as much as it does with 5/5, so this may be one area to play around with in the future.

Test results?  Who am I kidding, I’m no where near disciplined enough to spend hours in front of simulators… I plugged the above in, swapped out for my one-handers (Rimefang’s Claw with Rune of the Nerubian Carapace in main hand and Peacekeeper Blade with Rune of Razorice in off hand) and drew Drak’tharon Keep. Only time we had any issue was on the back rampart after dropping Dred… I got antsy and gripped a single over a bit too close to a pack, and with Rain of Fire falling, I wasn’t able to regrab the pack aggro before they dropped the warlock…  But, all was well because I apologized for pulling too close and he apologized for AoEing without giving me a second to pick ‘em up — no hard feelings and we wrapped up the easy mode dragon dude quickly.

I didn’t notice any issues, and my shammy healer (I’ve struggled with squishiness from shammy heals in DTK before) didn’t seem to have any problems whatsoever with the New Spec.

One attempt does not make a classic, but going all Spartacus is pure Win in my book.

My son has been begging me to let him play WoW. A few times, I’ve let him sit with me and we’ve gone through the character creation (he really digs checking out all of the options on the races and faces and beards). We’ve created level 1 “Wicked Green Dudes”, “Big Fat Cow-people”, and “Midgets” (sorry if I’ve offended, but those are direct quotes and I swear I didn’t teach him that stuff). He also insisted he create a Human Death Knight (because that’s what Daddy plays)… awww, how friggin’ cool is that?!?

Ok, I’m back…. Anyway, my son is eight years old. He plays with me next to him helping explain the quests and the navigation (he tells me WoW needs a Wii controller). I’m okay with him checking out the newbie areas, running quests and grouping up with me on stuff. I’m not ok with him jumping into instances, even with me in the group for interference. I’m far from fine with him jumping on Vent (headphones unplugged). Also, to keep him from asking inappropriate questions at the dinner table, I’ve locked down “Parental Controls” as much as I can think of: Prat routes trade chat to a hidden tab and the in-game “mature language filter” is active… but it’s just a matter of time before he reads something I’d prefer he didn’t… Another aside, he asked me last week what Hooters were, because he was watching How I Met Your Mother with my wife and she failed to explain it to him….

Anyways, that’s the stuff I’m doing to allow him to play a bit — he’s on, but it’s a censored / limited edition.

However, I’m not only limiting his exposure to protect his game experience from others, but also to protect other players game experience from him. Some people don’t want to play with little kids. I’m one of them — I’ll play with my own, but keep yours someplace else. I can hear the protests… “But my parents tell me I’m mature!” “But my guild thinks I’m an accountant named Syd!”  When I play, the thought making bawdy jokes or innuendos when kids are there feels off… and it takes away part of my enjoyment.

I’ve played in a Family Friendly guild (people were actually /gkicked for language use!).  It’s not impossible to tone down the vulgarity… but it’s pretty hard in vent when 50 bazillion adds pop that you weren’t expecting!  There’s a place for that — but even family friendly is not elementary friendly.

On the other hand, in a “regular” guild,  I used to run occasional instances with a pally tank that dropped the F-Bomb in party chat just about every time he typed something…  so I pegged him as a wanna be Jon Belushi struggling through college.  Imagine my surprise when I actually joined vent and his little soprano voice chimed in… it was like Alvin and the Chipmunks reciting Eddie Murphy’s Delirous routines… and it skeeved me. All I could think of was “Damn, I’m glad that’s not my kid!”.  He was 14 and had just posted formal pictures from his 8th grade graduation party… Ewwww!

My other pet peeve, and yeah call me Grandpa Artie if you must, but I really abhor “chat speek”. I can handle a few “LOL“s… a few “KK“s, maybe even a few “OMG“s…. But the “r u rdy” “o rly” and the “ttyl” make me want to scream! “w/e pops. ctfu“, they would say.  Whatever back, if you can’t speak English, I’d rather not instance with you.

Do I think that Blizzard should set up kid-friendly areas / channels / servers? Nope. I think the game is for teenagers and up. When you stop and consider it, do you really want to be teaching elementary school kids that the way to advance in life is to kill things so you can take their stuff, and if you had help killing, you get extra points for being Greedy or Needy. Teenagers understand the fantasy part (it’s cool, but it’s made up).  Elementary school kids think fantasy is real.  Teenagers tell dirty jokes… Teenagers are walking hormones, so most everything has some kind of innuendo…

Ramblings aside, I will continue to sit with my son and help him play from time to time.  We’re not adding a new account any time soon, and I really hope that trash-talking mage in my instance group is old enough to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie….

I hate WoW-Heroes. I hate Gearscore. Well… strike that.  I really have a problem with how players use these otherwise useful tools for perversion within the game.  C’mon, you know what I’m talking about… “WTF N00bcakes, you can’t tank a heroic because your GS too low!”

Nothing can make me so angry, so quickly as hearing that in party chat. It’s probably in trade chat too, but trade chat is so obnoxious I’ve relegated it to a hidden prat tab…. But party chat?  Whatever, Blizzard hasn’t queued us up for anything we can’t handle (and I’m pretty certain I could even handle HoR if people would oblige me with some crowd control on the damn hunter).

Anyway, I had this whole rant planned… and then I got sidetracked… and then Blizzard just obliterated the whole mindset of Gearscore bragging rights with their April Fools post…. EPEEN for the win!  What, you say?  That was weeks ago?  Yeah, yeah, yeah… I’m a slacker behind the times…  I had some other stuff going on!

Anyways, now, whenever I see some yo-yo say “Dude, 2300GS FTW!“, I just picture that WoW-Penis extending out of the top of their head and then the giggles start!

So, what are the actual uses for a ‘gear score’?  For the addon and me?  Not much… I like Rating Buster better.  I honestly don’t care about my gearscore.  Remember, Artie’s no raider. I’m perfectly fine for 5m heroic content. For WoW-Heroes, the usefulness there is for those that are in fact raid inclined.  For example, as a fresh 80 in blues / greens, don’t subject yourself to ICC25 man.  Follow the suggested instances using the green / yellow / red timeline… save you and your friends or pug-mates some hassle.

My thoughts?  Just like in real life, we can’t all be John Holmes.  Use what equipement you got, but use it well.

Cheers!

Anea (@_anea) from Oh look, an Alt! posed the question:

One of the things that can make us happiest as bloggers is seeing e-mails notifying us of comments on our blogs. However, if we took that away – and the influence it may have over our writing – would we become better bloggers?

Would writing what it really is you want to write make you truer to the purpose that you started the blog for? To write exactly whatever is in your head, rather than worrying about whether or not anyone will find it “interesting” or “good enough” to comment on? For the joy of writing?

Or are comments integral to your blogging experience and if you don’t have them, you don’t write?

Is seeing comments on a post nice? Is having an actual readership nice? Hell, yeah! It feels good –really good, actually. It affirms that other people are actually reading my opinions and being moved enough to either agree or disagree. If you don’t already know that, trust me, it’s an empowering feeling.

See, I started to write Blade Barrier for myself, not for an audience. The blog is an outlet for me to talk about my time in WoW – my wife is not a gamer and looks at me like I’m a lunatic when I exclaim “Nice! Another achievement!” I’m also older than the average player. My friends and neighbors are not into playing, and they honestly eyeball me a bit quirky if I’ve ever broached the subject. So, as far as real life goes, WoW time is solo time. The Blog is a great outlet to share that experience (with just me or with an actual reading audience). I hope my drivel reaches the eyes and minds of other WoW players, and I’ve listed myself over at Blog Azeroth and participate in forums (as well as Single Abstract Noun) to let other folks know I’m here — so yeah I do want people reading and dropping by.

I’m not sure if I won a lottery or that I prematurely climaxed like an overeager teenager (sadly leaving much of my audience unsatisfied), but after being online for only a few days, my seventh post was linked by the Daily Quest feature on WoW.com. My hits skyrocketed from 1-2 per day to 4,500 that day and 2,800 the next, and then slowly declined around 30… Now I’m hanging tough around 25 – 35 hits (at least according to Google Analytics!). I was still exploring my style (which continues), and I’m certain there was nowhere near enough substance or experience to retain that large of an audience. A few comments that were left showed that.

Negative comments are a double edge: my immediate reaction was indignation, especially on the more trollish. However, a few readers (and thank you!) left articulate posts on why they disagreed with my views. I appreciated that deeply because it made me reconsider, take in their points, and actually improved my fun in game (because their suggestions worked!)

On the other side, positive comments just make me happy. When I see that encouragement, I know I’ve reached someone and they get what I’m trying to say. I feel a connection, and it just feels good. That connection is a bit of a drug — you feel that once, and then you need to feel it again and again and again… It’s a toss up as to what is more addicting: playing WoW or blogging about WoW.

Boom, welcome to the podium. Tap the microphone… “Is this thing on?!?” Don’t choke, Artie, because people are listening to you…

Reader comments (vilifying or supportive) are solid proof of a reading audience. When I’m sitting here typing or reviewing the drivel my fingers just churned out, knowing that other people will read this makes me edit it and take a more critical eye. It’s a bit more like work — I mean I have to spell check and everything! But it also results in a result that I’m more proud of because I have critiqued myself and I’m ready for others to review it.

Anea’s question on whether reader comments / fan base demands alter subject matter is quite intriguing. I could see a need to satisfy a mainstream readership (especially on the larger blogs with more followers). It might very well be tempting to modify or perhaps even censor subjects in the hopes of preserving or increasing that readership. However, with ‘lil ole me, that’s not an issue. I do not need to, or even feel the urge, to modify my subjects or content of my post. What I do look at is the quality of my writing within that post… I want my opinions organized, but I won’t (nor need) to sanitize them for a reading audience.

Bottom line, I write whatever I want to write about. I welcome and deeply value reader comments as a form of feedback. Having readers raises my level of effort, and ultimately improves the quality of the site.

Cheers!

I love me some haiku…

Ode to HoR
Oh Random Dungeon,
Please not Halls of Reflection…
Aw crap, mass disband!

Hunter Request?
Beast Master Hunter:
Young core hounds are pretty cute.
Get out of my group!

You can do better? Prove it!

I promised myself I’d never spend time blogging about upcoming patch changes or game changes.  For this one, I’ll make an exception.

Straight from the Crab’s mouth:

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

Hmmm….

Now, I’m not gonna freak out. I’m not gonna go all chicken little and insist that the sky is falling. I’m a bit speechless, truth be told.

But, Blood?!? Really?

I leveled as blood. Self healing was awesome, dps was excellent, downtime was minimal, and I could solo all of the stupid 5m group quests in Dragonblight… Those were some heady leveling experiences (almost as easy as with a hunter and a gorilla). But, as I migrated into collecting tanking gear and tanking focused items, I wandered deeper into the unholy and ultimately frost trees. For me, focusing on the daily heroic LFG runs, I encounter fewer wipes and aggro issues as frost than I ever did as unholy… and the one time I tried blood tanking, the healer wasn’t healing me at all because my mob of mobs wasn’t on me — the first AoE peeled ‘em all off and sent them right at the squishies.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the change.  Until I can log in and experience it, it’s vapor ware and may waft into something new at any moment, so I’m not gonna get any panties in a bunch. They could have chosen any of the trees, and until we can play around with the talents its a guessing game.   (I was really hoping for Dual Wield talents to be low level fruit in a tree so that I could have the option to go all Spartacus and use two swords — that’s just plain fun).

However, I am quite intrigued on the changes –  a dedicated tanking tree with multiple tanking talents (bone shield and unbreakable armor and veteran of the third war?!?!  OP, baby!) may, just may, quell the notion rampant among the masses that DKs can’t tank. After playing both a hunter and a DK, I’m kinda used to being the “Rodney Dangerfield” and getting no respect. Maybe, just maybe, that misconception will fade away when Thousand Needles floods! I will be staying tuned!

Is this the only change?  Nahhhh… Check out the other impacts direct from the blues if you’re so inclined.

Catclysm will be in many ways, a brand new WoW.

Cheers!